The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared - they'll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.
I have my own studio down in Miami.
I always gravitate towards the independent side of things, just because those are the stories I always fall in love with, but you don't really get paid, and living in Los Angeles is expensive, and I have a mortgage to pay. So it's good to jump onto a studio film and then in all my other time do small passion projects.
When a movie is being rolled out, the studio publicists and all our individual publicists get together and come up with bullet points and talking points - 'Make sure you stay away from this,' and 'Don't say that quite that way, because that quote can be taken out of context,' and that kind of thing.
There have been times - and not just on 'The Newsroom,' but on 'The West Wing,' 'Sports Night,' 'Studio 60'... - where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn't good enough.
If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it's delayed. You can't do that with television - you have air dates to meet.
I didn't go to school for illustration. I did larger pieces, mostly drawings and paintings, and minored in video, but when I moved to N.Y.C., I didn't have a studio space anymore and downsized to my desk and started illustrating. I started a greeting card company and sold cards all over the city.
I'm portable. I carry a laptop and a little recording studio on my back.
My name is not unfamiliar to anybody in the dance community. I'm talking the upper echelon of dance studios.
When I was a little girl, I watched old movies maybe shot at Paramount Studios, and the fact that every day I get to drive onto the lot and shoot a show that sometimes takes place in the '40s, it's very interesting.
